Micah Elliott

2009 is a very important year for me.  It’ll be the first where I am completely independent, in (nearly) complete control of my (earthly) destiny, i.e., not answering directly to a corporate authority.  This is the year I lay the groundwork for a successful business or lose a lot of material things (or both, but I’m ready).  Business failure could mean having to go back to work in another corporate sweat-shop just to survive.  But that failure is really not an option since I think it would destroy me.  There are other options, but I’m too optimistic about the business to think about them today.
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• Writing my own little automated Twitter backup util with python-twitter. Existing services are manual. Will plan to blog details. #
• Submitted a patch to python-twitter to provide IsAuthenticated method, to match actual Twitter API. #
• Thinking about using pwdhash Firefox plugin for password safety. Good idea. No comments about multiple browsers. http://bit.ly/KHlr #
• Developing color schemes for 256-color xterms? (think vim, emacs, elinks.) Here’s a perl script to display them all: http://cli.gs/9J0WPj #
• Sadly confirmed that Terminus font (xterm) does not support bold at 8-pt. Considering going back to monospace (though it won’t do bold at 7) #
• Trying to figure out how I’m going to remember ‘<pre name=”code” class=”python”>’ every time I put a code snippet into a blog post. #
• Put in request for FreeHG.org to support markup (asciidoc, markdown, moin, creole, whatever) in description page. Nice free minimal service. #
• A way too careful look at different types of code comments and syntax highlighting. http://cli.gs/u6VMdX #python #vim #
• Looking forward to getting hands on the new Skribit “Suggestions” slider for blog (as seen on andrewhyde.net) http://cli.gs/LZ3zqt #

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I’m pretty picky when it comes to how I look at my code.  My tastes might even be a bit unique — I like things really small, colorful (earth-toned rainbow), and highly differentiated.  There are so many things that I value in a scheme that I decided to try and collect them here.  I use Vim, but this article should be editor-agnostic.  Have a look at my recent version of Adobe color scheme for Vim that aims to satisfy the criteria of this article.

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It’s amazing how many different purposes there are for code comments.  Most comments are treated the same by compilers/interpreters — ignored.  But humans have their own semantics based on some established conventions.  And “meta-processors” also do a lot with these; e.g., generating documentation, running tests, executing debug statements, locating tickets, assigning to variables, syntax highlighting and checking, compiler diagnostics control, editor folding, hidden full-blown languages, and probably even more.  But the point of this post is to simply enumerate the common comment types.  I’m working on some syntax highlighting for Vim to make more semantic sense of these, particularly for Python code.

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• WordPress 2.7 is incredible! Near-trivial comprehensive import from Blogger. UI, userbase, features make it a must have for *any* writer. #
• Magical December evening with new friends and old. Can’t wait to hear kids sing “Go Tell It On The Mountain” tomorrow. #
• Gmail Labs features I’m enjoying: right-side chat/labels, inline calendar. Now I don’t have to reserve FF tab for GCal. #
• After a couple months and nearly 1000 posts, our team is leaning away from Yammer. Broken Linux client has been a showstopper for too long. #
• Amazed by how many “microblogging” tools are listed on @hellotxt front page. By my estimates Twitter is still sadly the only game in town. #
• Just discovered that WordPress has a “more tag”, to just show introductory sections when not viewing the permalink. Very cool. #
• Of all the (four) Linux screenshot utils I’ve tried, only KSnapshot seems to be fully up to the task. #
• Why does WP editor have bold/italic but lacks monospace button? Format->preformatted is close but whole-line. Use <tt>/<pre> in HTML view? #
• Hoping 2009 shows a (further) explosion of open µblogging platforms (Twitter clones), and that Twitter sees another 500% user base increase. #
• Fam seems to have cabin fever, stuck in snow for 4 days now. Packing up to live with in-laws for couple days. #
• If you’ve been using Blogger, WordPress 2.7 makes it very easy (almost trivial) to migrate. *Much* easier than with 2.6. #
• Making some good use of Firefox addons: MeasureIt and Colorzilla. I like how they’re tucked away as lone partners in bottom left. #
• Anyone using Scribefire for blogging? Like it? My setup can only see most recent 30 posts/drafts with WordPress. Bug or setting? #
• Thx to Web Developer Toolbar (View Document Size) I just shrunk pages from 2.5M to 300K. Some nice WP auto-shrinking still sends big imgs. #
• Taking in-laws’ dog for walk. Don’t have a dog, but wondering how much plastic used daily for crapbags? Alternatives? Reuse? Don’t get dog? #
• Was really struggling to get GIMP to do crisp fonts. Changing default res of 72 to 300 fixed it. Then 1088×638 for std biz cards dimensions. #
• Listening to @timoreilly on @scifri. Tune in on NPR. #
• Interesting. @scifri on importance of research papers being *cited*. Bizplan conf I attended emphasized value of generating whitepapers. #
• Nice broad set of 40 minimal CSS layouts at Layout Gala. (I should stop trying to write these from scratch.) http://bit.ly/F3s3 #
• If this is true (G2 in Jan), I’ll probably jump on board (and also start tinkering with SDK). http://tinyurl.com/3qmzga #android #

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I’ve been spending way too much time trying out WordPress themes. Most have needed some tweaking, and very few meet my needs. I expect that my needs are not unique, but a lot of themes are really lacking in some important areas. This list tries to capture the accommodations my ideal theme would satisfy.

• Picture of myself/logo, prominent at top.  Make use of “Header Image” feature.  The only theme I found making use of this is Inanis.
• Honor fonts as specified.  Don’t override everything and make my monospace look like everything else.
• Don’t override or ignore my favicon.
• Big, prominent RSS icon to encourage subscription.
• Ability to display categories/pages on some sort of toolbar.
• Hide comments section if comments are disabled for the page/post.
• Tagline near the title.
• Whitespace is nice, but don’t overdo it with zealous line spacing.
• I don’t need three different locations for ads.  How about no ads?
• No superfluous pseudo-widgets. If I didn’t add a widget, please don’t do it for me.
• No custom boxes. They’re a nuisance.  Just make use of the standard widgets.
• Make your preview picture look at least a little bit like the real thing.
• jQuery is nice for improving the UI/UX.

Of the hundreds (thousands?) of themes I looked at, ~50 of them looked worth trying out.  Of those 50, these are the best free themes I found that came close to satisfying my list:

• Inanis
• Fresh Editorial
• Leafo
• Prosumer
• Simple Balance
• d’sanctuary
• Transparency

If you’re a mere theme shopper, I hope this helps you spend less time than I did searching for a sane theme.  Have fun tweaking!

If you’re a theme designer (or will be soon), please consider the list, and add any major omissions and personal pet peeves in a comment.

If I’m going to have a productive day, it usually means spending it in a shell. I use GNOME Terminal as my xterm clone of choice, simply because it’s a default. If you don’t know what terminal you’re using, it’s probably gnome-terminal if you’re running GNOME. I recently started making some productivity tweaks to my setups that I thought were worth sharing.

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So you’re finally ready to leave corporate life. Before you walk out the door, here are some things you should make sure to consider during your last couple months of employment.

I’ve tried to put these into something of an order. IOW, you can start planning your business right now, but don’t wipe your laptop until your last day. There are various things you might not be able to do while still corporately employed due to NDAs or other legal agreements you’ve signed. Be careful!

It’s a bit daunting to be taking the plunge, but I’m actually feeling really good about it. I’m most of the way through the checklist now. Here it is…

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I’ve used top for years to monitor machine activity. It’s grown some new features and behavior in the last few years that you might not be aware of.

Good ol’ top. For years it’s been the cornerstone of process control. It’s the first place we turn to hunt down a rogue process, or just to watch how resources are consumed. Sure, you could use a handful of GUI tools, but I frequently find myself working strictly in a terminal on remote machines, where top is indispensable. This is a short overview of top’s most important features that weren’t obvious to me until I got to practicing for the LPI exam a short while back. Now I’m making use of them quite regularly. To save you from wading through the 1,000-line manpage, here are the most useful interactive commands (you don’t have to worry about the CLI options).

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Over the years I’ve gotten a lot of value out of reading Amazon reviews. But only recently have I actually become a contributor to their sophisticated social system (a different S3 :-).

Now I’m discovering some great benefits to writing reviews — let me share them with you. Here are the reasons it might be worthwhile to be writing reviews of practically everything you read:

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